Piece of Mind

Karim Younan, Teema Sawas, Zihe Gong

What is a review?
Show understanding of a published material by sharing the information
regarding a specific topic.

Even though a review is informative, it should also be interesting.

Why write a review?

Reviews are easily accessible
Reasons to write a review:
1. They have something to say
2. Benefited from certain subject or experience, and they feel that writing this
review would benefit others.
3. Share and explain information
4. They are paid to do so

Why read a review?

Useful with helping people make decisions

Gain reasonable and unbiased information
Analysis of weaknesses and strengths
Evaluation of Material

Survey
Pie chart
demonstrating the
importance of online
review to consumers.

Pie chart illustrating how negative articles impact consumers

decisions.

What audiences does it appeal to?

Mostly people who are interested in the material
For casual materials:
Assumption of common knowledge
For academic materials:
Assumption of knowledge towards certain frontier

What does it achieve?

A review is written when someone wants to comment and give their own opinion
and knowledge on a certain subject.
Main goal is to inform

Reviews help people choose what to do, what to watch, what to read, what to
travel and so on.

Structure
There are many different types of reviews, hence, each one is structured to
suit its style.
However, all reviews should have a similar structure:
1. Heading
2. Introduction
3. Main body
4. Conclusion

How does a review make its argument

and/or purpose clear?
1.Dividing article into paragraphs with different each
2.Introduction of selected material
3.Sharing personal opinions

What rhetorical appeals does it

typically use?
For Casual Materials: Pathos
For Academic Materials: Logos

What multimodal (non-text) elements

might it use?
A review might use different images, such as the covers of books, images
from a movie, pictures of a restaurant, or any image that has a purpose
towards the review.

This is an example
of a reviews found
on yelp.

Whats the usual persona/tone?

For informative materials: Descriptive, neutral
For academic materials: Official and precise
For casual materials: Various tones

How does it cite its sources?

Crucial to cite all sources mentioned. These include:
Information from the selected material, e.g. title of
book: Found in introduction
For other outside sources: Found in end of the article.
Word-for-word quotations used from a source.
Any form of multimodal used
Paraphrasing

Example of citations:

An example of a complete book review reference is provided below:

Lawrence, G., Vanclay, F. & Furze, B. (Eds), 1992, Agriculture, Environment and Society:
contemporary issues for Australia, Macmillan, Melboume, pp. xiii + 337. A$32.95 (pbk),
A$64.95 (hbk).

How to cite a movie:

Title. Dir. First M. Last. Perf. First M.
Last. Distributor, Year Published.
Media Type.

Little Miss Sunshine. Dir. Jonathan Dayton

and Valerie Faris. Perf. Greg Kinnear, Steve
Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail
Breslin, and Alan Arkin. Fox Searchlight,
2006. DVD.

Problems faced when writing a review

The most common problem reviewers face when writing a review is how much
they need to describe what they are reviewing and how much detail should they
include.
It is very important to make these considerations, because this is what will shape
the review.

Examples of reviews
The subject of your review can be obtained from many scopes.
A few examples on topics that can be reviewed include:
Book
Media
Live performances
The Web
Education
Leisure and entertainment
Sports

Activity!!!
Write a review about one movie that only half of the class
has watched and share with the other half

Sources
Scholarly:
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.neu.edu/ehost/
detail/detail?sid=ad81e2d9-da37-4e79-9e3f-fe94869
c5953%40sessionmgr120&vid=0&hid=101&bdata=JnNpdGU
9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl&preview=false#AN=96
03150494&db=ehh
http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.neu.edu/ehost/pd
fviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c9a46b99-da13-4844-bbf1-1d6c1
226f29a%40sessionmgr4005&vid=26&hid=4114
The Call to Write Book, 6th Edition, John Trimbur

Sources
Regier, Willis Goth. "Expanding the American Mind: Books and
the Popularization of Knowledge ( Review)." Journal of Scholarly
Publishing. Vol. 42. N.p.: n.p., 2011. 268-70. Print.
https://www.google.com/search?q=define+review&ie=utf-8&oe=ut
f-8
http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~tomohara/comps_review/node3.html
https://www.rlf.org.uk/resources/the-structure-of-a-literature-revie
w/
http://owll.massey.ac.nz/pdf/sample-book-review.pdf
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/book_reviews.pdf
http://content.easybib.com/citation-guides/mla-format/how-to-cite-